Wednesday, March 30, 2016

It was a rare success,
notes Nancy Alderman, president of Environment and Human Health, Inc.: While
synthetic turf fields are popping up all over Connecticut, residents of
Middletown turned back a proposal by their city to create 9 synthetic turf
playing fields.As such, it’s worth
studying how the Middletown activists mounted their campaign.

Alderman’s organization,
a non-profit dedicated to protecting human
health from environmental harms, has
been raising the alarm about the recycling of tires as play surfaces for
several years.As Alderman points out, in
some states, used and discarded tires are regulated as a hazardous waste; in
Connecticut, they are treated as a “special waste” that, by law, cannot be
disposed of in landfills.That’s just
common sense, because as they decompose tires release heavy metals such as lead
and zinc, a variety of carcinogens such as carbon black and benzene, and other
toxic compounds that are as yet poorly understood.

Yet grind these same
tires up into fine crumbs – enhancing
the rate at which they release their toxic contents -- and they can be used as
in-fill for the synthetic turf fields on which your children play sports. Indeed,
such fields have in recent years been popping up all over Connecticut, despite
the resistance of local environmental groups.

The struggle in Middletown began with a largely
uncontroversial parks bond referendum.This was to be placed before the voters in November on 2015 and was to
secure funding for 10 years worth of improvements to recreational spaces,
including a
new pool, new exercise and walking trails, bike paths, a splash pad-spray park
and playground, and a dog park.But even
before the text of the referendum was officially released for public scrutiny
in early August, 2015, environmental watchdogs had learned that it would
include funds to install nine synthetic turf fields.

These
activists were unusually well organized thanks to an environmentally oriented
local 501(c)(3) non-profit, the Jonah Center.In 2011, with a $1,000 grant from the New England
Grassroots Environment Fund, it had founded ECoIN – the Environmental
Collective Impact Network – to serve as a clearing house for Middletown’s environmental
organizations.Currently, it includes
some eleven such groups, ranging from the local garden club to the city of
Middletown’s Recycling Commission, and the representatives of each meet once a
month to discuss common concerns.Thanks
to members from the city government, EcoIN had an early warning of the proposal
to install the synthetic turf fields.Opposition began immediately, with ECoIN members coordinating so that
there would be minimal duplication of efforts and a systematic strategy.

The
activists recognized that education would be the key to a successful campaign.Initially they had to educate themselves and
for this they turned to a number of sources, in particular Environment and Human Health, Inc. which has been
collecting information about the dangers of synthetic turf fields for a number
of years.

After educating themselves, the ECoIN members
began meeting privately with members of the Middletown Common Council to share
their concerns with them.The activists
also created fact sheets about synthetic turf targeted at different groups; on
a sports night meeting at the local high school, for example, they distributed
a fact sheet especially aimed at the parents of student athletes.Eventually they addressed the general public,
sponsoring a booth at an outdoor festival and collecting signatures on a
petition requesting that the city eliminate the synthetic turf fields from the
referendum.Three hundred signatures
were collected in a single day. representing a number of voters sufficient to
sway a local election and proof to the Common Council members that interest in
the issue was intense.

Defenders of synthetic turf insist that while the
crumb rubber typically used as infill in synthetic turf is contaminated with a
variety of toxins, no definitive studies have as yet proven that the resulting
risk to children through inhalation, skin contact, and ingestion is at an
unacceptable level.The response of the
Middletown activists was to ask parents and the city government if they wanted
to make their children the subjects of a toxicology experiment.In addition, using data taken from synthetic
turf industry websites, the activists called into question the economics of the
artificial fields, which would cost $850,000 to $1,000,000 each to install, and
which would require extensive specialized maintenance and replacement typically
after just 10 years of use.

Despite opposition from Middletown sports clubs,
this lobbying paid off.First the Common
Council agreed (in a tie vote with the city’s mayor serving as the tie-breaker)
to rewrite the referendum and substitute natural turf fields for the synthetic
versions.The environmentalists then
rallied to the support of the referendum, which synthetic turf supporters tried
to keep off the ballot.Finally, on
election day, the environmentalists handed out fact sheets outside the polling
places, persuading voters to support the referendum.Thanks in part to these efforts, the
referendum passed and the city won funding for the parks and public spaces
upgrades it was seeking – at a better price, due to the elimination of the
costly synthetic turf.

Grassroots activism is a learning process, with
practitioners constantly improving and updating strategies and skills.What brought success in the campaign against
synthetic turf will undoubtedly be re-applied to other, future campaigns.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

HOPKINTON –
Orchestrating the buzzing and swirling dance of a busy construction site is no
easy feat under regular circumstances. When striving to disturb the soils as
little as possible, separate types of soils for optimal usage later, and direct
water flow with an eye towards appropriate stormwater management,
neighborliness and erosion control, the jobbecomes that more challenging.

Scott Currin, his family, and crew

NOFA Accredited Organic Land
Care Professional Scott Currin is up to the task. Since the mid-1980s, he has
worked in excavation for high-end residential homeowners as well as commercial
clients. Early on he noticed the difficulty in avoiding compacting the soil as
the construction process goes on – what with building contractors and subs hauling
in tons of materials and heavy equipment, timing things so that everyone can
get their work done in the most time- and cost-efficient manner and watching
the weather to ensure control of water flow through the site from beginning to
end.

“I’m the first one in and the
last one out (on a job site) so I have a lot of say as to how things progress.
It’s really a huge dance. You have all the trades coming in with blinders on,
trying to get their piece of it done. Most of them don’t fully understand the
impact they have on the site; they drive materials over everything without
thinking about compaction (for instance). So I have to try to control that a
little bit,” said Currin, owner of Hopkinton Homesite Designs, LLC, founded in
1999. He started with high-end residential properties and also works on
commercial sites, believing that “no job is too small” for his one-man
operation.

Within the last three years, Currin said he “really got on board with the
do no harm, organic ideas.”

“The more I’m educating myself,
the more I want to educate others. I found Dr. Elaine Ingham on the internet.
I’ve been digging in the dirt for 30 plus years - like a big boy in the sandbox
- and I’ve never really understood how everything works in terms of soil
microbiology until I met her. She led me to NOFA and I really got into soils.
I’ve always been environmentally sensitive to what’s going on anyways, and now I
have the knowledge behind me to back it all up. This all makes sense,” he said,
praising Todd Harrington of Harrington’s Organics and Paul Wagner of the Soil
Food Web as being wonderful resources.

When Currin arrives at a new
site, he tries to envision the whole job in his mind – what will go where, who
needs to be where, when, for how long, how large the site is in terms of having
places to move different soils to for safekeeping until later in the job
process, and how to control the water on the site for months at a time.

“All sites are different so you
have to really see it all happening before it does, in order to make good
decisions,” he said. “Water is the first thing I look for.”

Currin assesses how he’ll
control water flow throughout the construction process, ensuring it won’t
negatively affect neighbors or cause erosion, and have the best drainage
possible. Then he looks at the soils.

“We try to see what we’re going to disturb and try to disturb it as
little as possible, thinking of how you’ll move your materials through the site
during construction,” he said, always considering how he’ll keep types of soils
such as topsoil, organic matter, subsoils and structural soils, separate –
perhaps by stockpiling them in a back corner of the site, or removing them to
another site if the site is too small (such as in a city or suburb environment)
to house soils for the project’s projected time span.

He also keeps in mind the future use of the site, thinking about where
lawn, gardens, planting beds and driveways will be, so he can replace the right
soils to the right places.

“Be sure the soil you’re excavating is suitable for what you’ll use it
for. All soils are very different in terms of how they respond to use. You want
to limit the number of times you handle it both for cost and environmental
concerns,” he said.

Currin often builds terracing and retention channels where water will
drain quickly into the ground, especially for sites with high water tables. He
watches the weather because when there is a two- to three-inch rainfall within
a 24-hour period, that’s a lot of water to control on a building site.

“You have to manage the site, for
every weather event, every rain event, access issues . . . keeping all this in
mind, as to how little impact you’re trying to have on the site. . . . It's
great to have unlimited funds to do everything you want but that's rarely the
case, especially when working with builders and budgets. You have to convince
them sometimes that it’ll be worth it in the long run, to sell the organic
aspect,” he said.

Currin uses a large 320
excavator, backhoe and multi-terrain track loader, the latter of which he
praised for its non-compaction properties. He makes his own compost tea and
sources soils from the best companies he can find to ensure top quality for
sites where that is appropriate. He praised Weston Nurseries for their
high-quality loam and topsoil and stressed the importance of sourcing soils
that are not contaminated.

On the side, Currin loves
adopting “rescue plants” from sites where they are unwanted, and often “marries
them together” in his Hopkinton backyard by putting their dead sides back to
back in close proximity. In spring, he said it’s “like a slow motion fireworks
display of flowering” as plants bloom in succession blasting out form, color
and fragrance. Among his favorites are rhododendrons, azaleas and umbrella
pines all growing in close quarters, along with a 15-20-foot tall blue spruce
that is married to an Alberta spruce and rhododendron. “They seem to enjoy each
other and are growing like crazy,” he said.

“The reason I got into pushing
the organic end of it is to try and build on this (way of thinking) to become
second nature. You’ve got to add some passion to your life after all. I really
enjoy helping people understand that this is so, the way it needs to be, to be
sustainable,” he said. “If I can convince people not to dump toxic chemicals on
site, take care of the soils, and just notice the woods. It takes care of
itself. If a tree gets sick, it dies but it provides food for everyone else.
Let nature decide how it’s supposed to be. Let it be!”

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About Us

The Organic Land Care Program is managed by the Northeast Organic Farming Association. The OLC has an Accreditation program for organic land care professionals based on the NOFA Standards in Organic Land Care. We also have a number of publications and programs to support homeowners and gardeners working to maintain their yard, garden and lawn without harmful chemicals.